Tamil Movements within the Colonial Period

The history of southern India is often marginalized within the broader frame of Indian independence movements. Mahatma Gandhi’s anti-colonial moments have overshadowed much of the regional struggles, especially in history discussions outside of India. To anyone who is not familiar with Indian history, it would seem that India was more or less united against the British despite caste, class, religion, language, and regional differences. Obviously this is not the case, as there were many movements, both before and during Gandhi’s movements, that were fighting against inequality and freedom within colonial India. Tamil Nadu in particular had influential political movements that did not always align with Gandhi’s Nationalist Movement. The Tamil movements did not fit neatly into the larger image of the nationalist movement due to their refusal to compromise. It complicates the nationalist narrative. However minimizing the Tamil nationalist movements in Indian history oversimplifies struggles within India during the colonial period. Analyzing the relationships between Tamil Brahmins, non-Brahmins, lower castes, and the colonial administration is imperative in order to understand how the colonial state and the people were shaped by one another.

Among the many languages spoken in India, Tamil is the regional language of Tamil Nadu among the Tamil people. Tamil belongs to the Dravidian group of languages and from all the Dravidian languages it has been the least influenced by Sanskrit.[1] Tamils are also the least influenced by Northern Indian cultures compared to other Dravidian groups.[2] Although Tamil Nadu had been under the influence of non-Tamils for around “2,000 years”, it only served to strengthen Tamil identity and literature.[3] Brahmins in Tamil Nadu were involved in Sanskrit works and traditions, rather than in Tamil literature and tradition, but they sometimes were involved with both.[4] Hence, there became a separation between Tamil Brahmins and non-Brahmins.[5] Brahmins became associated with a foreign “Aryan” presence due to their link to Sanskrit and non-Brahmins were considered the native people of Tamil Nadu, fueling Tamil identity and nationalism.[6]

During the colonial period, Tamil epics, religious works, and philosophy was being printed, exposing educated non-Brahmin university students to Tamil literature.[7] Many of the religious text published were Saiva Siddhanta texts.[8] Saiva Siddhanta was considered the indigenous Tamil religion before the arrival of Brahmin priests.[9] Tamil works produced during the twentieth century would analysis Saiva Siddhanta texts as well as literature that dealt with morality such as the “Tirukkural”.[10] These texts would be integrated into Tamil identity and nationalism.[11] English scholars also helped to booster the status of Tamil works, due to their power and status as colonial rulers.[12] Caldwell, an English scholar and missionary, wrote that the Tamil language had a rich ancient history, separate from Sanskrit tradition.[13] Non-Brahmins felt an obligation to preserve Tamil works, just as Brahmins preserved and maintained Sanskrit works.[14]

In 1916, the “South Indian Liberation Federation” was created in order to give a voice to non-Brahmins in politics as well as to curb the power of Brahmin groups within the colonial administration.[15] The movement, later renamed the “Justice Party”, argued that Tamil society was classless until north Indian Brahmins arrived, and that Brahmin priests and Sanskrit literature oppressed non-Brahmins.[16] The Justice Party was comprised mostly of wealthy, educated men, many of whom became politicians.[17]

Non-Brahmins did become politicians and were employed under the British administration, under non-Brahmin quotas that were set up by the government.[18] It was due to British employment opportunities that non-Brahmins justified collaborating with their colonial rulers, viewing the opportunities as a way to eventual freedom from both Brahmin and British rule.[19] Their first goal however was to gain economic, political, and education skill and power.[20] Therefore, it is not surprising that non-Brahmin politicians were not interested in the major Indian national movements that were going on at the time, focusing instead on creating a separate Dravidian language nation.[21]

Periyar E.V Ramaswamy Naicker was a major leader in the Tamil independent movement.[22] Frustrated that his resolution on “case-based reservations” did not go through during the Tamil Nadu Congress in 1925, he left, and was determined to lift the status of non-Brahmins in Tamil society.[23] In 1926, Periyar created the “Suyamariyatai iyakkam”, also known as the “Self-Respect Union”, in order to support young non-Brahmins.[24] Periyar’s union brought many young men into its fold, many of whom were poor and had little schooling.[25] Periyar believed that non-Brahmins had been oppressed by Brahmins by promoting their Sanskrit culture and literature as being superior to Dravidian culture.[26] He believed that the only way to divorce Dravidian culture from Brahmins was to erase Brahmin practices and Sanskrit texts from Tamil society.[27] Periyar told his followers to cease religious and marriage practices that involved Sanskrit texts and Brahmin priests.[28] Young men that belonged to the “Self-Respect Union” were also taught to abandon ideas of caste pollution and were educated in Tamil literature.[29]

Periyar also created the Kudi Arasu, a weekly newspaper a few months later, criticizing Brahmanism.[30] It also criticized religion, religious texts, and caste, such as Ramayana.[31] The Ramayana was viewed as a foreign text that celebrated “northern imperialism” against south India.[32] However Periyar’s critiques soon drew the ire of Saivites, who practiced Saivism, which was considered native to Tamil lands.[33] The Saivites had initially supported Periyar as they too believed that Brahmanism was a threat to their own branch of religion.[34] Maraimalai Adigal, a prominent Saivite scholar, was particularly upset at Periyar’s criticisms towards religion.[35] In 1916, Adigal, who belonged to the non-Brahmin elite, created the “Tanitamil Iyakkam” or “Tamil Purist Movement”, in order to rid Tamil of Sanskrit words, and gained many Saivite supporters for his actions.[36]

Clashes against Sivites and those in the Self-Respect movement happened frequently during conferences, often over debates and questions.[37] Pamphlets and fliers were also passed around on both sides, denouncing either the Saivites or the Self-Respecters.[38] Eventually, the tension between the two groups lifted after Justice Party members and Sivites, Thiru Vi Kaliyanasundara and Viswanatham, convinced Maraimalai Adigal to write an apology letter to Periyar.[39] Periyar accepted the apology and offered his own; however he remained committed to his opinions and beliefs.[40] The apologies were of more personal in nature, and so the debates between the two groups still raged on.[41]

Within the Saivite movement, there were orthodox Saivites who “opposed all change”, and some were reformists, but like Maraimalai Adigal, most were moderates who were willing “to accept some amount of reforms and overhaul saivism to the needs of changing times”.[42] The Saivites also took measures to bar self-respecters from future conferences, as to not interrupt the meetings like they had done previously.[43] Saivites from the Self-Respect movement did exist but they were a small minority within the Saivite group; furthermore their stance on more liberal reforms were too radical for the majority of the Saivites and so they did not make much of an impact within the Saivite moment.[44] However there were times when the Saivites and the self-respect members would unite under a common Tamil cause.[45] In one instance in 1935, Maraimalai Adigal published a book titled Arivural Kothu, which was to become part of the university curriculum in Madras.[46] Indian nationalists criticized the book and insisted it be pulled from the curriculum because the some of the essays praised the West.[47] Members of the Self-Respect movement supported Maraimalai Adigal by publishing their support in Self-Respect journals and newspapers.[48]

In 1937, the Madras Presidency required students to be taught Hindi in schools.[49] The congress ministry’s reason why Hindi was to be introduced in Madras was because Hindi was designated as the country’s national language as well as allowing students to understand Sanskrit and Hindu texts from northern India.[50] In this instance, Saivites and Self-Respect members united once again to protest the curriculum.[51] Periyar organized resistance towards the new language curriculum, viewing it as a form of oppression against Tamil and non-Brahmins.[52] The Saivites also protested the language requirement on the same grounds; some Saivites, such as K Subramania Pillai were so upset by the requirement that they demanded a separate Tamil state.[53] However Periyar gained more wide support among his audience of young non-Brahmins Tamils.[54] The Saivites were simply too conservative and their goals were too limited to offer anything substantial to the lower class non-Brahmins.[55] More than “50,000 people” protested in Madras during June 26, 1938 against the Hindi language requirement.[56] More protests organized by the Self-Respect movement were held in the following years.[57] Thanks to the efforts by the Self-Respect Movement, the Hindi requirement was withdrawn from Madras schools in 1940.[58]

Unlike the Saivites, Periyar refused to glorify the Tamil past, choosing modernity over tradition.[59] He criticized past Tamil kings, calling them brutal and unintelligent, blaming them for the caste system in south India.[60] Periyar was first and foremost a rationalist who believed that “the search for freedom can only be an ever continuing endless search”.[61] He placed the blame for inequality in Tamil society on caste and that the blame for caste hierarchy should be placed on Hinduism.[62] He not only championed the rights of non-Brahmins, such as sudras, but also for the rights of women and the poor as well.[63] Periyar was also a firm believer that only the oppressed could free themselves.[64] Periyar’s ideas of intersectionality and equality appealed to a great number of Tamil people, from the intellectuals to the masses.[65]

The Justice Party meanwhile had lost support due to its appeal only to richer and educated non-Brahmins.[66] However Periyar revitalized the party when he became the leader of the group in 1944, renaming it the “Dravida Kazhagam” or “Dravidian Association”, attracting new followers from cities and villages.[67] Those who led the leadership in the Dravidian Association were well-versed in Tamil and had excellent public speaking skills from serving in the Self-Respect Union.[68] Dravidian Association leaders wrote books in Tamil on subjects of Tamil culture and language.[69] They spoke in villages and cities, promoting Tamil literature and values.[70] Both their speeches and literature were constructed in “pure” Tamil, which meant that they used Tamil that had few Sanskrit words.[71]

Leaders in the Dravidian Association also used Tamil women as a symbol of Tamil pride.[72] Tamil language itself “was referred to as mother Tamil”.[73] Chaste women were featured in Tamil literature, and thus the symbol of the chaste Tamil woman and the need to keep Tamil pure were interlinked to one another.[74] The Tamil goddess of chastity, Kannagi, was also used as a symbol for the preservation of Tamil culture.[75] Despite the fact that most non-Brahmin leaders in the Dravidian Association “proclaimed themselves to be rationalists and atheists”, they allowed the belief of Tamil gods and goddesses in order to promote Tamil nationalism.[76] Brahmin gods and goddesses however were not spared from the leaders’ criticism.[77] However members and leaders of the Self-Respect movement, including Periyar, viewed the symbol of chastity as detrimental to women’s rights in India.[78] Periyar also felt that the Tamil language needed a reform in order to bring equality to its women speakers.[79] For example, as there was no Tamil words for male adulterers and widows, Periyar created the words “vidadvan” and “vibacharan” in order to bring equality into Tamil language.[80] Many women followed Periyar in the Self-Respect movement; during the anti-Hindi demonstrations, “73 women were arrested and jailed for their involvement in the agitation” and “several of them went to jail with their children”.[81] In fact it was women who gave Periyar’s title, meaning “Great One”, while he was jailed for inciting the same demonstration.[82]

In the Madras Presidency, the administration was run mostly by Brahmins.[83] In 1880-1881 there was one position “for every 125 brahmins” and one position “for as many as 5,888 Other Hindus, 11,984 Muslims, and 447 Indian Christians”.[84] This was due to the fact that Brahmins were better educated than non-Brahmins; they were bilingual in both Sanskrit and English, which gave them an advantage in communicating with colonial rulers.[85] During the colonial era, the British chose Brahmins for administration work due to their caste experience as scribes.[86] Brahmins also realized that the key to success in this new government was to ally themselves with the British.[87] In comparison, Tamil was looked down upon as inferior to both Sanskrit and English languages as it did not serve any advantage with British administrators.[88] Indian Brahmin nationalists on the other hand, also alienated those in the Saivites’ and Self-Respect movements by promoting Sanskrit.[89] Periyar had once supported Gandhi and the nationalist cause but when he became disappointed in them, he put his support in the British Raj, seeing Brahmins as more oppressive.[90] He also felt however that the British were not doing enough to curb the power of the Brahmins.[91] He also criticized the collaboration between British administrators and the Brahmin elite.[92]

However Periyar was incorrect in assuming the British were not trying to stop Brahmins from holding too much power in politics. In fact, as early as the 1850s, the British realized that Brahmins held a monopoly on administration due to family connections.[93] The British administrators realized that family connections were a problem for the bureaucracy because family members would be inclined to protect one another, deterring complaints and increasing the risk for corruption.[94] They also noted that Brahmins’ views of superiority over other castes were an issue as well.[95] Fraud was rife for the Board of Revenue; for example, in 1884 after a major loss of crops due to weather, remissions were paid to land owner but “nearly half the amount claimed was fraudulent”.[96] Large amount of revenue officials would grant family members favors.[97] Starting in 1904, the Board of Revenue began the effort of hiring more non-Brahmins in the Madras administration.[98] There was a British effort to hire more Muslims in the administration and there were additional efforts to increase Muslim education.[99] However the vast majority of positions, around sixty percent, were occupied by Brahmins.[100] It can also be assumed that opportunities for Non-Brahmins and those belonging to the lower castes did not improve, considering how popular the Self-Respect movement was.

The various movements during British colonial rule such as the Self-Respect movement and the Tamil Purist movement were organized responses to the inequality within colonial administration. Non-Brahmin elite and non-elite alike responded to the encroachment of what they viewed as a Brahmin foreign power, made more powerful by British polices. Although their anger was not directed entirely towards the British colonial powers, like the nationalist movements, their protests were a product of colonialism. The Tamil movements also reveal the inner conflicts within Tamil society, complicating the Tamil national narrative. However it also enriches the struggles that Tamils had to face against the vast inequalities that existed in colonial India.